Whither A Tribute To Leonard Cohen?

(This image found there.)

If it hasn't been made perfectly clear by what I wrote after I found out about his death, Leonard Cohen is one of my musical heroes.  If I had to make a list of my favorite artists, as people do & then pressure other people to do, he would undoubtedly make my top ten most of the time.  I have thought about & listened to to his songs for almost thirty years now.  There are few musicians who have touched me so deeply & affected me so strongly.

Tonight I'll pay tribute to him in a curious way: I'll do an entire show of his music covered by other artists.  Why do I do this?  You'll recall, I've done this before with artists like David Bowie & the Velvet Underground, but I've mixed some shows up like with George Jones & Morrissey.  Why just play others interpreting Cohen's work?  Why not hear from the man himself?

You must know by now I'm a contrarian by nature.  I have listened to enough Leonard Cohen tributes in the past two months to not want to basically do the same radio show as others have done.  But I also find something magical about reinterpretations of songs - sure, covers can be awful, but there are covers that make you think about a song in an entirely new way, & covers that unlock the potential of a song so it actually surpasses its original.  I hope you'll hear some of these tonight.

Tonight!  9-11pm Eastern!  8-10pm Central!  93.9 fm WLXU in Lexington! LCR online everywhere!  Join me in paying tribute to a true poet.

(P.S. I noticed that I chose images from the album Live Songs on two blog posts about LC.  I don't think that's my favorite picture of him, but for some reason I think of it first when I think of pictures of him.  I don't know why that is.)